Reset
by Fur0r P0eticus
Summary: There were times when Cloud was relunctant to take a shower after his mako nightmares...A gift for Filthy Mushi and inspired by Green Dreams.


_Title_: Reset

_Fandom_: Final Fantasy / Green Dreams

_Characters_: Cloud hints of Seph/Cloud

_Rating_: PG-13

_Warning_: Unbetaed

_Word Count_: 1107

_Author's note_: A thank you for Filthy Mushi for her delicious chapter 18 in Green Dreams, please excuse any grammar errors English is my second language. Note also that this is set in the Green Dreams universe. I do not own Final Fantasy Seven.

There were times when Cloud was reluctant to shower after the nightmares of being imprisoned in a deadly silent world of mako in the morning. The waking after them made reality to Cloud surreal and abstract in a sense that he questioned as to whether or not he was still stuck in Hojo's laboratory deep within the recesses of Shinra Mansion.

After all, it wouldn't be much of a feat for an addled desperate mind that only remembered the agony of mako, needles, and scalpels to fantasize the statistically impossible series of events that happened. Zack's and his escape from the mansion was nothing short of a miracle and defeating Sephiroth two more times after more so. It made a mind wonder if those slivers of green in his dreams were truly real and he was simply retreating into a sweeter world of his own machinations when pain was too much for a body to handle. A terrifying notion that was, made his heart race when his thoughts wandered to such speculations after the mako night terrors. Perhaps this was all a cocoon that wrapped him from the harsh truth of an utterly hopeless situation where one's freedom would come in the form of death.

He could still be in that mako filled prison treated like a lab rat under the care of Hojo, Cloud thought darkly as he walked towards the shower stalls near the cadet barracks in a daze, with Zack by his side in another cylinder much like his own. Zack and he both drowning in acid that ate and healed; simply waiting for relief that came momentarily when tubes emptied of mako. Before a new sort of horrifying realization set into a lethargic conscience after seeing a hazy coat of white and polished blach shoes of the mad doctor deciding to dissect them inside out in hopes of finding that one small anomaly that stopped the God he'd created at the reactor.

A shudder went through the blonde whether it was at the cold of the morning against warm overly sensitive skin or at stark memories cut through his brain just as precise as Hojo's proficient use of a scalpel was questionable. However, as horrible as those hazes of memory were it couldn't stop a mind from thinking/wondering.

Mechanically, Cloud went through the motions of disrobing, too gone into his ponderings to fling his shirt and boxers on a bench to avoid them getting wet, instead left them a puddle on the floor. His shuddering rasp of breath echoed loudly in the stark white room lacking the hustle and bustle in the evenings when cadets would shuffle wearily in to wash the sweat from heavy training. It was too early in the morning for others to be populating the area, oddly comforting in a sense no one would witness how close he was to an existential breakdown. He shook his head lightly and braced his shoulders while padding into a stall.

He hated showers as much as he loved them. Just as he enjoyed kneading at sore muscles after afternoon drills. He despised how it brought a sort of niggling terror at the sound it created when his head was under its spray.

Water battered his pale skin scalding while streaming down his pinking flesh in rivulets attempting to carry away the sweat and grime. But never could it wash away the ghostly feel of mako coating his skin and the taste that rolled in his tongue constantly after his nightmares. Cloud dropped his head to block out that sound the shower made and pressed his body against the wall of stall in a desolate sprawl, forehead, chest, arms, and fists to the slick, cool tile. Closing his eyes he took a breath, water dripping off his long blond lashes and down his slightly upturned nose.

His thoughts continued to eat at him, gnawing at what little questionable rationality he had left, threatening to leave nothing but a man in a teenager's body drowning in semi-madness grasping at straws in attempts to make sense of why he was in the past. Pale slick fingers tugged at errant blond wet spiky locks in attempts not to think of the sound or anything at all with a flare of pain and to concentrate on washing instead. But that sound is still there urging him to listen and his thoughts kept chewing.

Could still be in that prison of green, the thought coils in his head, where the pressure of the slick neon green goo thick like coagulated blood made his ear drums pop and enhanced the sounds of his mind screaming at him for anything/anyone to abate the burn that tore him asunder inside out whilst he detachedly wondered where it came from.

Cloud cannot help but often wonder at the impossibility and improbability of his situation as he relived his cadet days while his mind was that of a veteran ex-SOLDIER, a failed experiment that saved the world twice. Made him question whether or not he was still in a mako tank making this entire twisted adventure up or was he really the fallen hero that was sent back in time because the guilt that ate at him? He wasn't sure and that scared him the most to find himself at the edge of this cliff questioning reality.

Maybe somewhere along this fantasy gradually turned nightmare his brain decided to hit a reset button in hopes of getting the happily ever after with the man he crushed on since childhood. To cruelly replay events differently from the intricate web he'd woven while encased in the mako tank because every time he took a shower he could still hear the sound under the spray of water. The muffled agonized scream begging him for relief.

The lithe cadet slid against the tile clutching his head with both hands as the world wormed to brilliant green while awake. Idly, Cloud pondered if he finally crossed the line between waking and sleeping as a pale body defying the laws of physics in a tube floated in within glowing mako beautifully abstract and green.

Blonde lashes fluttered open to the tapping of a finger against glass.

Was it really such a thin line to cross?


End file.
